August 12, 2008

“A movie people didn’t know they wanted to see”

Just read a great post at the Halthor Legacy that connected so well to an earlier post of mine, where I wrote

Bottom line: what we “choose” is not always what we want. It’s just what we have to choose from. And what we want for the most part comes from somewhere-it is shaped by what’s available.

Halthor Legacy writes

The reason why big shots would fear people finding out that “nobody knows anything” is simple: financiers pour millions into every movie that gets made […] Investors like to hear what sounds like convincing evidence a movie they’re backing will make them money.

The age-old example here is the original Star Wars. It wasn’t supposed to make more than a modest profit (and that, only because it was so low budget). Fox thought it was crap. To their amazement, it lined people up around the block on the first day […] All because – despite being a rip-off of any number of artistically superior movies – it wasn’t quite like anything anyone had seen before.

Lucas had made a movie people didn’t know they wanted to see. If you’d polled them, they wouldn’t have promised to see it. (emphasis mine)

[…] Everybody knows at the end of the day no stock expert can guarantee you the right investments – no movie is guaranteed, either. But when a movie succeeds inexplicably, potential investors start to wonder if you really know what the audience wants to see.

You handle this by sticking to the formula and memorizing a lot of excuses that always back the formula.